- My daughter is 32, and I raised her on my own.
- I got used to hearing "Oh, that must be so hard," but I didn't see things that way.
- The hardest thing I remember about solo parenting was feeling lonely.
One of the things I am most proud of in my life is raising a human to adulthood. My daughter is 32, and although she deserves much more credit than I do for how she turned out, I can't help having a little "Yay me" moment when I reflect on what an awesome human she is.
Although I'm married now and co-parent my two younger children with my husband, I raised my daughter on my own. The experience of parenting my daughter was vastly different than parenting my two sons, who are now 13 and 14.
I have a partner now who shares parenting responsibilities and decisions with me, but while raising my daughter, everything was on my shoulders. Having another invested person to look to and bounce things off of when I'm not sure about something is an entirely new experience.
The world is also different. Technology and social media have evolved, presenting new conveniences and timesavers, and also new things to worry about, like comparing our parenting to everyone else's.
Social media makes us compare each other's parenting
When people found out I was a single parent, a typical response was, "Wow, that must be so tough." I rarely thought of it that way, although I remember being lonely and broke. Looking back, I think being a single mom was hard. However, I think today's solo parents have a more difficult time due to the pressures of social media.
I discovered Facebook mom groups when my two youngest children were small. We adopted our boys in 2012 and 2013, and there was a Facebook mom group for everything. Adoptive moms, boy moms, toddler moms, all types of parenting styles — you name it, there was a ready-made Facebook community for it. At first, I was thrilled to have found a network that would make me feel less isolated. Then I started noticing the snarky, thinly veiled criticisms.
I compared my performance as a mom to complete strangers on Instagram, wondering why no one else had a train wreck of a dirty kitchen and whether I was failing because I wasn't color-coordinating our outfits to go to the grocery store.
I'm not sure if I would have been able to take so many things with so many grains of salt back when I was in my 20s and a single mom.
When I see a picture-perfect family on social media, it's easy to let myself feel inferior and mentally list the things they're doing right that I'm doing wrong, but I'm usually able to curb that urge to compare too strongly. I remind myself that I've posted some things on social media that aren't representative of what's really happening in my life and that other people are probably doing the same.
For me, loneliness was the hardest thing about being a single mom
The hardest thing about solo parenting my daughter was limited adult interaction. I got my social fix at work during the day, but I would have liked someone to talk to after she went to bed at night. Being lonely, while never being alone, is something that surprised me about being a single parent and something definitely not in the manual.
I often felt like my personal identity was limited to being a mom and that outside cutting the crusts off of sandwiches and reading "Amelia Bedelia," I didn't really know who I was. "Work me" was serious and hardworking, trying to erase my mom persona while on the job. I knew a few other moms, but we were mostly too busy and exhausted to make time for friendships. The concept of self-care wasn't as widespread as it is today, and nobody really talked about what moms needed. I got it all done. My daughter was thriving, and I advanced at work, but there was always that pervasive sense of aloneness.
I sometimes wonder how my experience parenting my daughter in the 90s would have been made better or worse by the presence of social media. My experience with Facebook mom groups has taught me that they're mostly a place of judgment and one-upmanship. Still, there are nuggets of connection in there if you can handle weeding through the noise and occasional snark. I wonder if I was better off being isolated on my own island than I would have been connected to a digital environment that had the potential to be toxic.
Still, I envy today's single moms a little bit. People are more used to solo parents, and it seems more "normal." And, whether we call having access to an online community of moms that might be unhealthy, I like the fact that there's a choice now.
Maybe, in that sea of "I can't believe you're giving your kid that much sugar" and "Does anyone know what this rash is?" I would have been able to find my people. I'll never know for sure.